[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 115 (Thursday, September 6, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S9194]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO ALICE WATERS

 Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to an 
extraordinary American and Californian, Alice Waters, who has 
revolutionized our approach to food and the way we eat.
  I congratulate her and her flagship restaurant, Chez Panisse, for 
reaching the milestone of being in business for 30 years. While 
sustaining a successful restaurant for all of these years is 
significant, Alice's broader contribution to our culture in the past 
decades is unparalleled.
  While I have known and admired Alice for many years, I am astonished 
when I consider the effect she has had on our country. Alice has 
cultivated programs and integrated food and gardening into imaginative 
projects as ways of fostering love, growth, responsibility and respect 
of life and work.
  Alice's disciples and her philosophy of fresh, local and natural, 
have spread throughout our land. A remarkable number of protegees have 
opened their own path-breaking restaurants and have become culinary 
artists themselves. But her influence goes far beyond the kitchen. Due 
to the leadership of Alice and her restaurant, Chez Panisse, the 
National Restaurant Association reports that over 60 percent of the top 
American restaurants now mention organic ingredients on their menus. 
Alice worked to pass the Federal organic food law and has helped define 
new U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines for school lunches.
  Alice has written and co-authored many cookbooks, which provide more 
than recipes. They have helped to spread her philosophy of food into 
American home kitchens. She has founded gardening projects at the San 
Francisco jail and the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley's Martin Luther 
King Jr. Middle School, where she established a curriculum that brings 
organic gardening into classes and where the results of the children's 
gardening are used in the school's lunch program. The students who 
participate not only learn valuable skills but also cooperation and 
responsibility.
  Alice believes that as Americans change their thinking about food, 
America will change for the better. Alice has said about our children 
that ``Most families in this country don't even eat one meal a day with 
each other. So how are we going to pass on our values to them if we 
don't eat with them?''
  While Chez Panisse has been graced with many talented people over the 
years, the one constant has been Alice. She has poured her life into 
Chez Panisse and into what it represents, and we are all the richer for 
it.
  I am proud to know Alice and I wish her, her good works for our 
community and nation, and Chez Panisse another 30 years of continued 
success.

                          ____________________